Imaginative Resistance and Modal Knowledge

Res Philosophica 97 (4):661-685 (2020)
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Abstract

Readers of fictions sometimes resist taking certain kinds of claims to be true according to those fictions, even when they appear explicitly or follow from applying ordinary principles of interpretation. This "imaginative resistance" is often taken to be significant for a range of philosophical projects outside aesthetics, including giving us evidence about what is possible and what is impossible, as well as the limits of conceivability, or readers' normative commitments. I will argue that this phenomenon cannot do the theoretical work that has been asked of it. Resistance to taking things to be fictional is often best explained by unfamiliarity with kinds of fictions than any representational, normative, or cognitive limits. With training and experience, any understandable proposition can be made fictional and be taken to be fictional by readers. This requires a new understanding both of imaginative resistance, and what it might be able to tell us about topics like conceivability or the bounds of possibility.

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Daniel Nolan
University of Notre Dame

Citations of this work

Alethic modality is deontic.Qiong Wu - forthcoming - Mind and Language.

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References found in this work

On the Plurality of Worlds.David Lewis - 1986 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 178 (3):388-390.
The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance.Tamar Szabó Gendler - 2000 - Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):55.
Thinking the impossible.Graham Priest - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (10):2649-2662.
Morality, fiction, and possibility.Brian Weatherson - 2004 - Philosophers' Imprint 4:1-27.

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